U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers on the lookout for “terrorists” – Photo by Mateus_27 With the United States mulling over the possibility of building a fence across the Canada-US border and a Secretary of Homeland Security falsely claiming some of the 9/11 terrorists entered through Canada, it’s not surprising to hear about Canadians encountering ...

Guerrilla bike lane – photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country At approximately 10AM this morning, Toronto’s Guerrilla bicycling advocates – the Urban Repair Squad – re-painted the intersection at Dundas and Sterling, the location where cyclist Jenna Morrison was run over by a truck and killed last month. Bike lanes were painted on ...

Today I presented my Rethinking Transportation talk to a group of 50 children at an elementary school in Toronto. The kids belonged to an “eco” group that meets once a month – their ages ranging between 9 and 12 years old. I started out by asking the children how many of them had rode their ...

Bangalore traffic congestion – Photo by Kiran Jonnalagadda Although bicycles have historically been viewed as the poor man’s mode of transportation in India, there are signs that the working class are starting to view bicycles as an accepted mode of transportation. A recent article in the Indian news publication DNA highlights the rising interest in ...

Photo by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize Cycle clothing and gear is a topic I seldom cover here on The Urban Country, for there is no shortage of bicycle blogs out there already reviewing the latest bicycle clothing and gear. But with the winter fast approaching for me here in Toronto, Canada I thought it ...

Photo of garbage bike lane by James Schwartz / The Urban Country On the morning of November 7th, a pregnant woman was killed by the back wheels of a truck in Toronto while riding her bike to pick up her son at school. As a result of Jenna Morrison’s tragic and avoidable death, various cycling ...

“Cargo Bike” – Photo by Mario Jahn / RateMyVelo.com It was bound to happen. A newspaper column politely asking drivers to share the road and accept cyclists as fellow travellers rather than adversaries, published in a newspaper with a readership of ~1 million people, was bound to stir up some controversy. As expected, I woke ...

RIP Jenna Morrison – Photo by Aaron Lynett / National Post On Monday morning, a wife, mother and yoga instructor who was 5-months pregnant was run over by a truck and killed in Toronto in a completely avoidable incident. This senseless death has been on the minds of thousands of people in Toronto because it ...

Photo of Vancouver Hornby separated bike lanes by Paul Krueger In an opinion piece posted on straight.com (Vancouver’s Online Source) an ignorant political candidate named Ken Charko has proposed to make Vancouver’s bike lanes seasonal and turning them into metered parking for the “winter”. Defining “winter”, Charko proposes closing the bike lanes down from October ...

Screenshot of Mike Rubbo’s Situp-Bike-Art.com website In September we announced a bicycle art contest where one lucky winner who submitted a bicycle photo would win a painting of that photo by Mike Rubbo. The painting would be shipped to the winner, and would also be added to Mr. Rubbo’s bicycle art collection at www.situp-bike-art.com. Mike ...